BRAZIL: Days after public anger at the scandals surrounding President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva helped force an unexpected second round in Brazil's presidential election, opposition candidate Geraldo Alckmin has sparked a crisis in his own campaign by accepting the endorsement of one of the country's best-known but least-loved politicians.
On Tuesday Mr Alckmin appeared before the cameras with the former governor of Rio de Janeiro, Anthony Garotinho, who said he was backing Mr Alckmin because under President Lula "Brazil has never seen a government of so many scandals".
But while Mr Garotinho's endorsement throws one of the main vote-getting machines in Brazil's third most populous state behind the opposition candidate, it has ruptured his coalition in Rio and risks alienating many supporters for whom Mr Garotinho is a political anathema.
Cesar Maia, Rio's mayor and a key backer of Mr Alckmin in the state, reacted to the move by withdrawing his support. He called Tuesday's photo opportunity "a real disaster", warning "with this alliance Alckmin loses the ethical debate".
An avowed populist, Mr Garotinho's stewardship of Rio de Janeiro has been marked by multiple accusations of graft and numerous investigations. A former radio presenter, he has passed through a string of political parties during his career, which as well as the governorship has included two tilts at the presidency.
On stepping down as governor in 2002 to run for his first presidential campaign he engineered his wife Rosinha Garotinho into the post and continues to wield power through her. The Garotinhos are close allies of Rio's burgeoning evangelical movement which has increasingly sought to elect pastors and bishops to public office.
Last year the Garotinhos were stripped of their right to run for office until 2007 by a judge who found them guilty of vote buying, but the sentence was suspended on appeal.
Earlier this year he went on an 11-day hunger strike in protest at what he said was a campaign of vilification against him by the media.
Another key backer to pull her support for Mr Alckmin following the Garotinho endorsement is Denise Frossard, one of the main candidates to replace Mrs Garotinho as governor. She ordered that Mr Alckmin desist from using her photo in his election material in the state and said she would now spoil her ballot in the presidential run-off.
Mr Alckmin's party has tried to minimise the significance of Mr Garotinho's endorsement and the candidate himself has said that he would not have granted the photo opportunity had he known the trouble it would cause. He now claims that he was "jostled" into it by an insistent Mr Garotinho.
The crisis highlights a problem for all Brazilian presidential hopefuls. To win power in such a politically diverse country candidates must seek endorsements from powerful local interests which can provide votes in key regions but which are often tainted by the worst practices of Brazil's frequently populist and clientelist political culture.
Mr Alckmin's team is now trying to portray Mr Garotinho's endorsement as such a political necessity. But Mr Maia warned that if Mr Alckmin were to canvass with Mr Garotinho along Copacabana beach on Sunday "he'll get the worst booing he's heard in his life".